The above pictures represent a big part of our life with children which goes beyond the children we have given birth to. In the upper picture is a picture of Miss S and Mr A, Miss S trying to love both him and her doll as her nurturing spirit runs deep and overflows daily. Precious, precious children. The second picture is one of our favorites and one that our Social Workers would love to use as a poster for Foster Care. Our family fondly calls it “The Princess and the Fisherman”. That little Miss S, who loves to be either a princess, a ballerina, or recently a doctor but ALWAYS a mommy has wound her way into that fisherman’s heart, and it is a beautiful site to behold! She was a princess on the day that picture was taken. 🙂

Another reason that I took off the last year from blogging would be that we had another daughter become engaged and married. This is Thanksgiving night at our home, where the house is filled with lots of people, family or friends. Was we prepared to pray we all were in a circle taking turns saying what we were thankful for. When it was Justin’s turn he spoke about Mandy and then dropped to his knee and proposed. I was stunned but the Fisherman knew what was coming and wanted me to be surprised. This engagement was the response to lots of prayers and a testimony to God working in both of their lives. We are thankful. The wedding plans began immediately as they set the date for April. our family is not one to have long engagements as we feel if you feel led to get married…. then GET married!

This is a picture of Jeni a few months later — you can kind of see that she is pregnant!

Thanksgiving weekend we had a family dinner and at the end Jeni said that she needed to share something with the family. After a couple of years of desiring a baby and knowing it had been a rough fall I listened with a heavy heart — she started by saying that they were going in for an ultrasound but they would be trying something different ( as opposed to the other ultrasounds that they had been doing ) because they were pregnant!! My heart burst with joy and I sobbed as I heard the news that I had been praying so hard for. What a delight to know that God had shown His love once again upon our family and honored us with a new life. Please know that our family believes in the complete sovereignty of God and if there had been no baby we would rejoice in life as God has willed and would also choose to look into adoption. These years were a time spent in me re-learning my doctrine on God’s sovereignty and find that He is beautiful and good in it all.

Wedding fun — I hope sometime to have some wedding pictures but for now I do not have any on my computer —

It was a glorious weekend celebrating the marriage of Justin and Mandy and adding Justin and his son Tanner to our family.

March and April were busy with wedding plans and parties and celebrating — It took us a week to recover from it all!